Глава 39

Gen.39:1. Joseph was taken to Egypt, and the Egyptian Potiphar, the courtier of the Pharaohs, the chief of the bodyguards, bought him from the hands of the Ishmaelites, who brought him there. After some digression, ch. 38, from the thread of the story about Joseph (Gen. 37:36), the sacred writer continues the story of the latter. If in Canaan, as the story of Judah, Chapter 38 shows, the descendants of Abraham faced the danger of rapprochement and even merging with the Canaanites, then the taking of Joseph to Egypt, which ultimately caused the resettlement of all the descendants of Jacob to Egypt, indicated the need for the development and entry of God’s chosen tribe into the society of the Lord in the exceptional conditions of life in Egypt, where the descendants of Jacob, on the one hand, borrowed many of the benefits of Egyptian civilization, but, on the other hand, despite their significant isolation from the Egyptians (who abhorred the Jews and other nomads, Gen. 43:32), they managed to preserve their national integrity and the purity of their religious heritage. Gen.39:2. And the Lord was with Joseph: he was successful in business and lived in the house of his master, the Egyptian. The expression “the Lord was with Joseph” is understood by Jewish interpreters to mean that, cut off from his father and family, Joseph constantly had God in his thoughts and heart, which is why God, as the Heavenly Father, showed him special care (the Midrash makes a comparison reminiscent of the Lord’s parable about God’s care for one lost sheep more than for 99 who were not lost). “In the master’s house,” that is, according to the Jewish interpretation, he was not forced to do menial (agricultural) work. Gen.39:3–4. And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that everything he did was brought to success by the Lord in his hands. And Joseph found favor in his sight and served him. And he set him over his house, and all that he had he gave into his hands. The blessing of God on Joseph and his deeds does not hide from the gaze of the pagan - his master (v. 3), just as the blessing of God over Isaac was noticed by the Philistines (Gen. 26:28); over Jacob - Laban (Gen. 30:27), and he invested him with complete trust and authority in the house and made him an overseer over his slaves (in Rome such an overseer is called atriensis; overseers of this kind are often found depicted in Egyptian sculptures, cf. Matt. 24:45–47; Luke 12:42–44). Gen.39:5. And from the time that he placed him over his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the house of the Egyptian for Joseph's sake, and the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in [his] field. “Wherever the righteous come, the shekinah goes with them,” notes the Midrash regarding the words of the sacred writer about the blessing of Potiphar’s house for the sake of Joseph. Gen.39:6. And he left everything that he had in the hands of Joseph and knew nothing with him except the bread that he ate. Joseph was handsome in figure and handsome in face. Seeing the special success of his affairs with the arrival of Joseph at his home, Potiphar entrusted to him all the functions of life, “except (only) the bread that he ate.” Rashi understood the last expression as a euphemism for expressing the idea of ​​Potiphar's wife. Others see here an indication that Potiphar, as an Egyptian (Gen. 43:32), was abhorred to accept food from the Jew Joseph. Perhaps this figurative expression marks the lazy carelessness of the Egyptian Potiphar. Mention in Art. 6 about Joseph's beauty has a direct connection with the speech about his misadventures, which were a consequence of his attractive appearance. Temptation by his wife and chastity of Joseph, slander and imprisonment Gen.39:7. And his master’s wife turned her eyes to Joseph and said, “Sleep with me.” The fact of the deep moral corruption of Potiphar's wife is fully confirmed by the testimony of ancient authors that Egypt has long been revered as a country of debauchery and widespread betrayal of wives to their husbands; according to Herodotus (2 books, 111), under the son of Sesostris, the whole of Egypt searched in vain for a wife faithful to her husband. The Egyptian legend of the “two brothers” (Vigouroux) has a very close affinity with the story of Chapter 39. Gen.39:8–9. But he refused and said to his master’s wife: Behold, my master does not know anything in the house with me, and he has given everything that he has into my hands; I am no longer in this house; and he forbade me nothing except you, because you are his wife; How can I do this great evil and sin before God? Joseph’s exhortations are complete and thorough: he points out the following points that should have sobered up the criminal wife: • a feeling of gratitude towards Potiphar, which could not allow his criminal relationship with his wife; • a sense of honor and personal dignity (“there is no more me”); • reminding a woman of marital responsibilities (“for you are his wife”); finally • a sense of the omnipresence and fear of God, as well as the holiness of the moral law (“how... I sin”). Gen.39:10–12. When she said this to Joseph every day, and he did not listen to her to sleep with her and be with her, It happened one day that he entered the house to do his work, and none of the household was there in the house; She grabbed him by his robe and said, “Lie with me.” But he, leaving his clothes in her hands, ran and ran out. This temptation continued for Joseph for many days, and when his moral steadfastness remained unshakable (the Midrash in this sense understands the words of Jacob, Gen. 49:24, about Joseph: “his bow remained strong”), then the shameful passion of the Egyptian woman increased to its utmost limits, all her feminine modesty disappeared, and she was like a true harlot (Proverbs 7:13–21). tries to force Joseph to sin. Then Joseph runs away, leaving the clothes in the hands of the Egyptian woman and as if not caring that this would give material evidence of his imaginary crime into the hands of a depraved and vindictive woman. Gen.39:13–15. But when she saw that he had left his clothes in her hands and ran out, She called her family and said to them: Look, he brought a Jew to us to mock us. He came to me to lie with me, but I screamed in a loud voice, and he, hearing that I raised a cry and screamed, left his clothes with me, and ran, and ran out. Rejected passionate love according to the psychological law (cf. 2 Samuel 13:15), especially among unbridled natures, turns into hatred, and the Egyptian woman takes revenge on Joseph by slandering him, first in front of her household (vv. 13-15), then in front of her husband (vv. 16-18), with that cunning and insidious, but sure calculation that the first lie that followed immediately after of the incriminated fact and having (in the person of the household) acquired witnesses to its truth, will make the second lie more likely. She slanders Joseph with great skill. She calls the “Jew” with the greatest contempt (cf. Gen. 43:32, 46:34) and thus, hypocritically expressing her disgust for Joseph and even trying to convey this disgust to her household (“above us,” v. 14), she tries to radically destroy the opposite (about her rejected love) assumption of people, who are hardly, however, especially disposed towards the favorite of the owner of the house, Joseph. As evidence of the truth of her words, she points out 2 moments, factually true, but pervertedly motivated and deliberately rearranged one in place of the other: 1) her cry and 2) Joseph’s supposedly voluntary abandonment of clothes (v. 15), meanwhile, the latter happened earlier and was a consequence of violence against Joseph by the Egyptian woman, while her cry for help or protection was a forced simulation of resentment after this. Gen.39:17–18. And she told him the same words, saying: The Hebrew servant, whom you brought to us, came to me to swear at me [and said to me: I will lie with you], but when [he heard that] I raised a cry and screamed, he left his clothes with me and ran away. The same art - to take the role of an accuser instead of the position of the accused - is expressed by Potiphar's wife in her address to her husband (she also disparagingly mentioned him, v. 14, in a conversation with her family): to him she expresses her feigned anger and reproaches for the fact that he, having imprudently introduced a “Jewish slave” into the house, was himself the final, albeit indirect, cause of her and the family’s shame. Gen.39:19. When his master heard the words of his wife, which she spoke to him, saying, “Thy servant has done this to me,” he was inflamed with anger; Potiphar was "inflamed with anger"; it is not said who - Joseph or his wife. According to Jewish commentators, Potiphar did not believe his wife’s accusation, because otherwise he would have executed the man who attempted to desecrate his bed; but he did not want to investigate the matter further, avoiding shame for himself and his family. That, however, his anger, at least at first, was directed at Joseph, and not at his wife, is clear from the consequences of the described incident and the slander stated: he imprisons Joseph in prison (v. 20), probably without listening to the accused, about whose self-defense the text says nothing. “If,” says Saint John Chrysostom (Demon 62, p. 669) about Potiphar, “he did not believe, then he should not have been imprisoned; and if he believed that the words of the Egyptian woman were true, then Joseph no longer deserved imprisonment, but the death penalty and the highest punishment... But the hand of the Most High restrained the stranger and did not allow him to immediately rush to kill the young man.” God's mercy to Joseph in prison Gen.39:20–22. And his master took Joseph and put him in prison, where the king's prisoners were imprisoned. And he was there in prison. And the Lord was with Joseph, and extended mercy to him, and gave him favor in the eyes of the captain of the prison. And the keeper of the prison gave into the hands of Joseph all the prisoners who were in the prison, and he was in charge of everything they did there. The name of the prison is sohar, which is not found anywhere in the Bible except the story of Joseph (Gen. 39:20–23, 40:3–5), and is used here with an explanatory note: the place “where the king’s prisoners are imprisoned” (i.e., state criminals), Aben-Ezra considered an Egyptian word, and Yablonsky brought this word closer to Coptic. soncharch – “guard of the bound.” But Gesenius finds it possible to see here a word of the same root with the Hebrew sachar, to fence, from where sohar (sochar) - fortification, which is most suitable for ὀχύρωμα in the LXX (Slav. “stronghold”). The warden of the prison (vv. 21, 22, 23), from whom Joseph earned favor, is different from Potiphar, at whose house the prison was probably located, and to whom the warden of the latter was probably subordinate. Thus, the contradiction that critics find in the biblical story disappears - namely, that Joseph had two masters and that there were 2 captains of the guard. Ps. 104:17–18 mentions Joseph's imprisonment; but this was probably only during the first time after imprisonment. Joseph was imprisoned, perhaps 28 years old, since after 2 years of imprisonment, when elevated to the post of first minister of Pharaoh, he had 30 years (Gen. 41:46). You might be interested in: